Medical School Committee Adds Community Members

The Medical School committee that is directing the development of the 1100-unit Mission Hill housing project decided last night to add representatives of five community organizations to the committee as full voting members.

The committee, which now has 17 student, employee, faculty, and administration members, requested that Robert H. Ebert, dean of the Med School, ask each of the five groups to elect a representative.

"We have every reason to believe that the groups will be most cooperative," Rashi Fein, professor of the Economics of Medicine and chairman of the committee, said.

The five community organizations that will be invited to join the committee are the Mission United Neighborhood Improvement Team, the Parker Hill-Fenway Area Planning Action Council, the Board of the Roxbury Comprehensive Community Health Center, the Jamaica Plain Area Wide Health Committee, and the Health and Welfare Committee of the Model Cities Board. They have not yet been officially notified of the the committee's decision.

Fein said that anyone who wanted to could work on the subcommittees. "The committee felt that no five individuals would be able to represent all of the diverse groups in the community. We would like to involve as many community people as possible," he said. The committee meetings are open.

Relocation Policy

Four subcommittees will recommend policies on maintenance of the Harvard-owned properties and their neighborhoods, relocation, replacement housing, and the development of a medical care program. Ebert has said that he will abide by the committee's recommendations.

The committee also decided yesterday to ask the trustees of the Affiliated Hospitals Complex to designate a representative, and to invite Mark A. Goode, director of Community Relations for the Medical School, to join the committee.

'Impossible'

Howard B. Waitzkin, a first-year medical student and co-chairman of the subcommittee that recommended the addition of the five community members, said that the subcommittee first tried to decide if it would be possible to get community representation on such a committee. "The gist of the preamble of our report is that it is impossible. We can just get community participation," he said.